If You Know How to Look
by wee-me
Summary: Look harder, there's something off about this girl, this Lydia.


**If You Know How to Look**

Authoress: Wee-Me

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own "Beetlejuice" or associated characters, so no suing and no summoning.

Begin

For all the worry and planning he never comes back. They layer her with protection, keep her under close scrutiny for several years, and the other side checks in with her yearly- not a peep from him to her. Not that she contacts him either. Not that he'd come if she did.

Still, they'd expected some grand revenge plot, or perhaps another sleazy wedding. They get nothing. He moves on to greener pastures: newer ghosts to let him out, breathers who can be tricked into speaking his name, other places where the Walls are thin enough to slip through. But not her again. He doesn't even mention her to Juno when they speak, just nods along like he's truly listening to her lecture. Her name doesn't even seem to register when Juno mentions her years on when he's been caught yet again.

He never comes back. She doesn't miss him, it isn't like that, but she does wonder. She spends half a decade just waiting for the other shoe to drop. She's young enough to have the luxury of time to waste that way. Her family worries with her, even Juno worries with her. That's why they don't notice.

She gets asked out exactly three times in high school. The first is by a cute local boy that she'd very much like to date. Three days after she says yes he explains, in what's meant to be a sensitive way, that he regrets asking and would prefer they not speak again. The second is by a female classmate that thinks she's some sort of day walking vampire. Lydia declines politely, she's not interested in women. The girl gets expelled three days later for unspecified reasons that make the school staff give Lydia side-eye looks about for the rest of the school year. The third is a vagrant, somewhere between her age and her father's, who drunkenly propositioned her as she rode her bike past the fence he was mending. The couple he was working for, in exchange for room and board, report him missing the next day and the police find his body in the river two days after that. Spread over four years this isn't much of a pattern.

She finally gets to date in college. Thirteen first dates. All thirteen boys find other prospects and other places to be the minute the date ends. Her senior year she meets a nice, rather vague boy who should remind her of her father and doesn't. He mentions marriage six months in and she doesn't object. They're engaged to be engaged for three months before he graduates and moves back home to California. Three phone calls and then they're done.

A year after she graduates she gets stuck in an elevator with her next beau. They laugh at how weirdly chick flick set up this is, but they go for coffee anyway. He lives in an apartment on the floor above hers when they meet, but by the end of the year they share hers. They don't formalize the engagement until eighteen months have passed from their first meeting. They're still searching for the perfect ring when she finds him in bed with another woman. Her apartment is hers again and he moves to be with the other woman.

She's twenty-seven and getting bitter before she dates again. A friend sets them up, it's awkward, but it's real. She loves him in a way that she didn't any of the others. She wants it to last. She starts to worry. She finally starts to worry, finally looks back, finally looks for a pattern. She doesn't like what she comes up with. Doesn't like that she recognizes the strange look in his eyes. They're together two years before she will even discuss marriage. She doesn't want to hurt him or have him get hurt because of her. She decides to seek help. As ever, she goes home to the Maitlands and Juno. She wants them to tell her she's being crazy. She never gets what she wants.

The Maitlands acknowledge the pattern has validity. Juno goes further, stares deep into her eyes, into what might be her soul, finds something that startles her. She leaves in a hurry; a terse 'wait here' is all they get. Two days pass. Her fiancé is sweet and understanding about the delay, he knows how family can be, he's happy just to hear her voice. She breaks down crying after they hang up, how long will she have those 'I love you's? How long before she ruins his life too?

Juno's news is grim. She's seen him, knows what happened. Lydia made a Deal, Agreed to the Terms, and that's that. He never came back, never collected the rest of what was owed him, but she isn't free of him. That's probably the point. Funny thing is, it isn't even his fault, just the nature of the Deal. So her very essence is smudged up with his greasy fingerprints, not tainted per se, but not exactly right either. It's barely noticeable, but if you're sensitive or know just how to look you can see it. She's gotten better at hiding it from sight over the years as well, even without knowing it existed.

The real problem isn't seeing it. As close as Juno can explain is radiation; it was stronger at first, but her later relationships suffered from slow poisoning. She's poison. She isn't surprised to find that out. There's no way to fix it. She's not surprised by that either. She's probably ruined more lives than she knows just by being around people. That's not unlike what she used to tell herself in her darker moments as a teen. There's no comforting her, but her ghost family tries.

Her fiancé always said he loved her so much he thought his heart would bust. It does. She gets the call mere hours after she finishes crying herself to sleep. She'd decided how to end things with him, how to break his heart. His body beat her to it. She goes back to the home they shared. Buries him. Makes nice with his family. Packs up. Goes home to Winter River. Never leaves.

He never came back. She never really left. She's still there, if you know how to look.

End

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This has been bouncing around in my email for a while. No idea where it came from, just a possible follow-up to the movie. This one's little different than my usual stuff. Hope you liked it.

Part of my 2011 13 Posts/Days of Halloween.


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